The Oracle at the Edge of the Pool

The pool water was the color of a bruised peach, that sickly orange tint of sunset refracting through chlorine. Maya floated on her back, hair spreading like dark kelp around her, the sensation of swimming without moving somehow more exhausting than laps.

Her iPhone sat on the poolside lounge chair, face down like a guilty witness.

She'd been here three hours, avoiding the hotel room where Marcus lay passed out on expensive sheets, his breathing that wet, terrible rattle that came after too much whiskey and not enough truth between them.

Out on the hotel's terrace, a concrete sphinx crouched amid palms, its limestone face weathered by salt air and indifference. It reminded Maya of her husband—stony, silent, asking riddles she couldn't answer, guarding secrets behind that inscrutable gaze. A month ago, she'd found the other woman's hair tie under the passenger seat of his car. A single orange elastic band, the kind teenage girls wore, inexplicably tangled with his gym bag. When she'd asked, he'd looked at her with those sphinx eyes and said nothing.

The phone buzzed. She didn't move.

Her skin had puckered from too long in the water, fingertips wrinkled like she'd aged decades in an afternoon. The swimming had been pointless—she couldn't outpace her own anger, couldn't dive deep enough to escape the hollowed-out feeling in her chest.

Another buzz. Then a third, rapid-fire. The screen lit up.

Maya pushed off the pool floor and surfaced, water streaming from her hair. She wrapped herself in a rough hotel towel and approached the phone like it might bite.

Three messages from him:

*I'm sorry.*

*I don't know why I said those things.*

*Can we please talk?*

She watched the cursor pulse, that little vertical line demanding her response. Behind her, the sphinx remained unmoved, its stone lips sealed with whatever secrets it kept.

The sky deepened from orange to purple, that bruised color that comes after something beautiful has been ruined. Her hair dripped cold down her spine.

Maya typed: *I'm checking out tomorrow.*

Then she dropped the phone in the pool.

It sank without a splash, just a quicksilver flash disappearing into that artificial orange twilight, and she thought: well, the sphinx would approve. Some riddles, finally, didn't need answers.